You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

Protein folding is linked to disease, such as Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

What is protein folding?

Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

What have we done so far?

We have had several successes. You can read about them on our Science page, on our Awards page, or go directly to our Results page.

I have been folding on my machine 24/7 for over a month at 100% CPU. Folding at Home can be set to use cpu at idle or low priority. Basically I can hardly tell I am running anything as far as daily use.

I'm not going to turn down any support for this project. Folding at Home has been around 10 years, I am only recently learning about it. I'm planning on getting a team folding for w7forums, any and all support is welcome.

No longer shovelling

Am I correct in assuming that resources are only used when the computer doesn't need them for other things? If so then the others who have concerns should know this. Like you c_c, I can't tell anything is running unless I look in Task Manager/Performance.

Win 7/Linux Mint Lover

Me neither. I somewhat understand what the research is about, but don't understand what's required of us to participate. I'm certainly not a scientist. So, is this something where we donate the use of the spare resources that we're not using? And besides signing up, what's required of us, other than lending our spare resources?

Established Member

Exactly!
From what I got, it has to do with folding proteins (what the hell does that mean?!) and somehow doing it on our computers? Right?
Please post a simple explanation, not a super detailed incomprehensible description. On wikipedia, it says that it is some kind of simulation. Why do they need use to simulate some weird stuff? What is the outcome of this?
Thanks!
Fire Cat

Quick Scotty, beam me up!

What this project basically does is use a member's computer for computing resources. The theory is that the more computers the project is able to utilize and run the program, the faster the results will be achieved.

There is no input required from the owner of the computer, other than allowing the program to run in the background that's all. A degree from M.I.T., Stanford, Berkely, or the Max Planck Institute is not required.

SETI@Home uses that same type of method. The more computers that can crunch the numbers the quicker the results are achieved.

Basically, it's the law of SYNERGY. The following is from Wikipedia:

synergy is where different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome. If used in a business application it means that teamwork will produce an overall better result than if each person was working toward the same goal individually.

In the business model, that is the "one plus one equals three", because two people working together on a common goal always achieve better results than the two working on separate projects.

That's why "compartmentalization" in the government's projects take so darn long, because the left-hand never knows what the right-hand is doing. (Although it helps maintain "top-secrect" status on those projects.)

More from Wikipedia:

Synergism, in general, may be defined as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently. The word synergy or synergism comes from two Greek words: erg meaning "to work", and syn meaning "together"; hence, synergism is a "working together."

Protein folding is the physical process by which a polypeptide folds into its characteristic and functional three-dimensional structure from random coil.[1] Each protein exists as an unfolded polypeptide or random coil when translated from a sequence of mRNA to a linear chain of amino acids. This polypeptide lacks any developed three-dimensional structure (the left hand side of the neighboring figure). Amino acids interact with each other to produce a well-defined three dimensional structure, the folded protein (the right hand side of the figure), known as the native state. The resulting three-dimensional structure is determined by the amino acid sequence.[2]
For many proteins the correct three dimensional structure is essential to function.[3] Failure to fold into the intended shape usually produces inactive proteins with different properties including toxic prions. Several neurodegenerative and other diseases are believed to result from the accumulation of misfolded (incorrectly folded) proteins.[4] Many allergies are caused by the folding of the proteins, for the immune system does not produce antibodies for certain protein structures.[5]

To every one that wants to know what Folding at Home means. I can not explain it any better than what is written on http://folding.stanford.edu/ home page.

The only requirement is to download the client and run it on your machine. There is no special sign up or anything mandatory of you. It is strictly you volunteering your computers free processing power while you are not using it. If you need to use your computer for anything Folding at Home does not get in the way. Folding at home only uses what you are not at the time. You also have the option to make Folding at home use only a percentage of processing power.

We have a grand total of 6 WU (Work Units).
Later we will be watching the points instead of WU. Seeing how we are just starting out I am only interested in the WU count.